


all hope ye who enter here

by fardareismai



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas, Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 10:39:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18658765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: she belongs to himshe belongs so far above himhe tried to stay awaybut she came down to him





	all hope ye who enter here

**Author's Note:**

> I can't tell you if it's Hades and Persephone (it is) or Rhysand and Feyre (it is) so it's both. Or neither.

The air in the city was hot and dry.  It was a warm spring and the air smelled of garbage left sitting in the sun and day-old piss.  The fall of night brought little coolness to the air, but it brought anonymity to the faces that passed her, as though they were all wearing masks.

 

She hoped her face was as anonymous.

 

The spring had been hot and the roses had bloomed early and the apartment far above the city streets had been filled with them, smelling so sweet she thought she would swoon.  Or sleep forever. Or vomit.

 

Maybe it was the dizzying smell of roses that had sent her running to the street below.  It was as though she could hear them weeping and she had to… what she had to do she couldn’t have said, but she could not stay in the sky above it all.

 

She’d never been there.  Her feet had never touched these sidewalks.  They had never allowed her down here- she was too sweet.  Too innocent.

 

She was for roses and beauty, not darkness and filth.

 

And yet, she could almost feel the shadows wrapping her up in safety like a cloak, hiding her summer-white dress, darkening her glorious blaze of hair.  She could not see herself, only knew that when the shadows surrounded her she could walk with a surer tread, confident that she could catch no eyes.

 

She was wrong.

 

He saw her from his own shadows.  She thought the darkness hid her, but it did the opposite: it turned the wide-eyed girl into a glorious queen.

 

What was she doing here?

 

How had she escaped their gilded cage?

 

And what was he to do now?

 

She belonged to him.  She’d always belonged to him.  Since the very beginning. Before her had been nothing, and after her… only a lifetime of waiting and wanting and wishing.

 

Every instinct in him screamed that he go to her.  Speak to her. Touch her. Claim her. Carry her away to his home and keep her forever at his side.

 

He knew what would happen if he approached her- if he even came near.  He reeked of death, and she would run in an instant. So he only watched her move, cloaked in the shadow which seemed to love her as much as the light.

 

But then, what could fail to love her?

 

He thought he would be content only to see- to fill his eyes with her and let her pass, only to return to her place so far above him and his.  He would return to his lonely darkness, now lit with a memory of her face.

 

But she stopped.

 

And she turned.

 

And she looked deep into the shadows in which he stood, as though she could see him, but it was impossible.  No eyes which had been made for light could possibly-

 

“Who’s there?” she said, and her voice was sweet as a nightingale.

 

He said nothing, sure she would conclude that she had been wrong, turn, and walk again away from him.

 

She took a step.

 

Toward him.

 

It seemed as though his old, ruined heart began to beat for the first time in all of time as she approached him in his darkness, without fear.

 

She smelled, he realized, as she continued to walk into the shadows, like he did.  On her, the smell of decay wasn’t the smell of death, it was the smell of life. The rich, dark loam under which the seeds slept each winter, waiting their rebirth in spring.

 

She smelled too of spring wildflowers and summer roses, but these were like an awkward perfume sprayed over the soft, warm, living scent of her.

 

He stepped forward, out of the shadows, to her.

 

“There you are,” he said, and his voice was the low rumble of the underground stream which feeds the growing earth above.  “I’ve been looking for you.”


End file.
